Ill Nature

The title of John McKeown's new collection of poems involves a punning conflation of sardonic ill humour and our environmentally ill planet. The spare elegance of his previous work is very much in evidence here, with a grimmer, bracingly bleaker note, in work which strips away the poetically comforting in favour of starker, purer vignettes of the urbanized nature around us and the inescapable allure of the opposite sex. There's quiet passion here, naked honesty, dryly-humourous confession and a certain bitter-sweet appreciation of the heart's ongoing misadventures.